SCB plans major revamp of branches to boost SME lending

“This adjustment is a strategy of the bank in preparing to cope with digital banking and e-payment, whose role is increasing in financial services,” Vipon Vorasowharid, the first executive vice president in charge of business banking, said yesterday.
The front-office staff of branches should adjust their role to acting as business consultants to SMEs, because transactions at branches have declined.
“Customers have migrated to digital banking from going to branches. We have introduced a pilot project at some branches to serve SME customers,” he said.
The bank’s business banking group is joining forces with the retail banking group to set up a system to transfer customers and the credit analysis function to branches.
The SCB executive in charge of mortgages also told The Nation that several SMEs buy residences and some of them do not require a home loan because they have enough money to make a cash purchase, so mortgage staff have to adapt to suggesting services that involve SME products.
The bank calls this collaboration “leverage the bank”.
The bank will focus on building its SME customer base.
A project loan to one corporation can help support the business of subcontractors in the corporation chain that are SMEs. This will lead to increased lending to SMEs.
When SMEs have more support from the bank, the labour market will get more income and this will be passed on to more consumption in the country.
“Under the leverage-the-bank strategy, we will set up a new credit scoring system to oversee the risk of SMEs, since they are not our customers yet.
“The new credit system can know in advance the unusual signs of customers in the future.
“This system will reduce the time for credit consideration and cut some unnecessary info. Most of the wasted time in the past came from the decisions of humans,” he said.
The bank must reduce the judgement of people and replace them with a system.
The bank is also able to know when it should be aggressive or tone things down.
Linking with the value chain of corporate customers and leveraging its nationwide branch network to provide a seamless service to SME customers resulted in SME loans in the first quarter expanding 1.5 per cent to Bt362 billion, representing 20 per cent of the bank’s Bt1.8 trillion loan portfolio.
The bank targets Bt80 billion-Bt100 billion in new loans to SME customers in order to expand its SME loan portfolio by 4-6 per cent this year.